Kidney Stones

July 14, 1985|By Charlie Jean

CLINICAL TESTS of a second generation machine that uses sound waves to smash kidney stones will begin this month at the Michael Reese Medical Center in Chicago. The new machine, a lithotripter, is built in California and should be less costly and more efficient than the original lithotripters built in Germany. The German machines, one of which is at the Shands Teaching Hospital in Gainesville, require the near submersion of a patient in a bathtublike device, while the American machine looks more like an X-ray table with a smaller area for submersion and localized use of shock waves.